Rural Mystery

When Andrew Apperley visits his brother David in the East, he brings along an unexpected companion. Andrew's giant wolf dog, Comanche, is so wild that he has to be chained up for the safety of others. However, when the Apperley brothers come across a man drowning in the East River, Comanche breaks loose from his chains and swims to the man's rescue.

Fiona is devastated when her husband Charlie commits suicide after the accidental shooting of his friend. Though Fiona decides to keep farming their successful property, rumours that she intends to sell keep circulating. When Detective Burrows arrives to sign off on the investigation into Eddie's death, his suspicions are aroused by some strange anomalies at the scene. As Dave becomes increasingly convinced that something sinister is going on, Fiona finds herself dealing with disasters at the farm.

A fatal accident at Bruncliffe’s livestock auction mart leads to a call for detectives Samson O’Brien and Delilah Metcalfe. What starts as a simple health-and-safety investigation soon takes a sinister turn when they discover evidence that suggests murder. Clive Knowles approaches them for help – his sheep are being threatened by the gang of rustlers that is plaguing the Dales. Meanwhile, poacher Pete Ferris has also decided to play his hand, setting in motion a blackmail plot which will ensure Samson is pulled back into trouble with his nemesis Rick Procter.

Having spent 10 months on the run after he was framed for the murder of an estate-clearing associate, handyman Jay Porter returns to his hometown of Ashton, New Hampshire. During his time as a fugitive, he searched for a hard drive - evidence that would put his longtime nemeses Adam and Michael Lombardi behind bars. But he came up empty handed.

As kids, Amelia and Kylee were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in Beaumont, Missouri, leaving blood all over the kitchen. Scrappy and driven, Grace, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and working at the meatpacking plant, had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better.

In Unamurra, a drought-scarred, one-pub town deep in the outback, two men are savagely murdered a month apart - their bodies elaborately arranged like angels. With no witnesses, no obvious motives and no apparent connections between the killings, how can lone police officer Detective Dana Russo - flown in from hundreds of kilometres away - possibly solve such a baffling, brutal case? Met with silence and suspicion from locals who live by their own set of rules, Dana must take over a stalled investigation with only a week to make progress.

Already widowed by the age of 40, Ilka Nichols Jensen, a school portrait photographer, leads a modest, regimented, and uneventful life in Copenhagen. Until unexpected news rocks her quiet existence: Her father - who walked out suddenly and inexplicably on the family more than three decades ago - has died. And he's left her something in his will: his funeral home. In Racine, Wisconsin. Clinging to this last shred of communication from the father she hasn't heard from since childhood, Ilka makes an uncharacteristically rash decision and jumps on a plane to Wisconsin.

A teenage girl has gone missing. The whole community has been called upon to join the search. And now an interviewer arrives, intent on capturing the community's unstable stories about life in the weeks and months before Becky Shaw vanished. Each villager has a memory to share or a secret to conceal, a connection to Becky that they are trying to make or break.

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

Father Solomon Lancaster—the town's dry-witted sheriff and priest at the community Catholic church—finds himself on the forefront of an investigation into a series of murders. Soon, he's fighting to match wits with the serial killer terrorizing his town while trying to justify his law-enforcement credentials to the FBI as their analysts and profilers take Crooked Creek, Indiana, by storm. But Father Solomon is hiding secrets of his own. Ones that threaten to rise to the surface as the murders continue and the investigation draws nearer to the truth.

Andrea Brafford’s life is nearly perfect. A passionate marine biologist happily married to Craig, the man she loves, she has recently moved into a home commensurate with their success to enjoy a life many others only dream about in one of Houston’s most desirable suburbs. But only a few months later, a trial that dramatically polarizes their town names Craig Brafford as a defendant in the murder of his young wife, shattering the serenity of the peaceful community. Andrea’s life remains a mystery that investigators and public opinion equally fail to solve.

On the evening of Saturday, January 15, 1977, a local commuter train is delayed at a small village station by a freak blizzard. Young Nurse Jennifer Evans, keen to get back to her family, plans to walk the last couple of miles to her home in a neighboring village. She phones her daughter to confirm that she’s on her way, but she never arrives home. In the ensuing police investigation, no trace of Jennifer Evans is ever found. The only evidence is a photograph taken by a fellow passenger of footprints in the snow in front of Holdergate station.

In between spring break and summer is usually a downtime for Corrie and the campground, even with Bike Rally Weekend on the horizon. This April, however, peace and quiet are not an option. A disconcertingly attractive biker arrives, who arouses the suspicions of Corrie's childhood friend and one-time ex, Sheriff Rick Sutton. Then, one of Corrie's favorite guests is shot dead in his own RV, leaving his wheelchair-bound wife in the care of a son whom no one knew existed.

A brutal murder in a town called Treachery? It's a story most journos would kill for, but for Stuart Dryden, it's a major inconvenience. He didn't take the gig at the local rag for its bustling crime beat. He'd sacrifice a career-making story for happy hour at the pub, but not even he can let a grisly murder through to the keeper. Especially when he keeps getting scooped by a persistent kid with a disposable Kodak.

Annie McIntyre has a love/hate relationship with Garnett, Texas. Recently graduated from college and home waitressing, lacking not in ambition but certainly in direction, Annie is lured into the family business—a private investigation firm—by her supposed-to-be-retired grandfather, Leroy, despite the rest of the clan's misgivings.

Attempting to escape his abusive father and generations of cyclical poverty, young Jonah Hargrove joins the mysterious River - a teenage girl carrying thousands of dollars in stolen meth - and embarks on a Southern Gothic odyssey through the East Texas river bottoms. They are pursued by local drug kingpin, John Curtis, and his murderous enforcer, Dakota Cade, with whom River was romantically involved. But Cade and Curtis have their own enemies, as their relationship with the cartel controlling their meth supply begins to sour.

A powerful and resonant novel from Tom Franklin - critically acclaimed author of Smonk and Hell at the Breech - Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter tells the riveting story of two boyhood friends, torn apart by circumstance, who are brought together again by a terrible crime in a small Mississippi town. An extraordinary novel that seamlessly blends elements of crime and Southern literary fiction, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a must for readers of Larry Brown, Pete Dexter, Ron Rash, and Dennis Lehane.

In this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and Wi-Fi are banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet.

Dane Kirby is a broken man and no stranger to tragedy. As a life-long resident and ex-arson investigator for McFalls County, Dane has lived his life in one of the most chaotic and crime-ridden regions of the south. When he gets called in to consult on a brutal murder in a Jacksonville, Florida, motel room, he and his FBI counterpart, Special Agent Roselita Velasquez, begin an investigation that leads them back to the criminal circles of his own backyard.

After some traumatic teenaged years in rural Connecticut, Cale and Ambrose Casey had nothing left to say to each other. Cale ran off to Hawaii to sell luxury real estate. Ambrose stayed behind and built up his construction company. Neither thought they’d be in touch again and were glad for it—until they learned of a real-estate developer’s plan to drain and expand Gibbs Pond.